I miss the island. I miss the rogue nature of my people. How they didn’t give a single fuck for the prim and perfect becauseExile was where shit like that went to die.
This place is where people like us do.
I stare at the board. Floating chalk writes symbols in a language that isn’t mine and draws shapes that look like they’d crawl under your eyelids. I can’t read it. Not yet. Maybe never.
My face gets hot, and I want to break something.
I can’t do this. Spell casting? Hell no. The only thing I know how to cast is my fist.
I don’t even think I’ve everhearda spell before.
“Haide?” The teacher calls. I lift a brow in answer. Her lips twitch. Not a smile. A dare. “Since you’re so eager toparticipate, why don’t you demonstrate?”
My lips roll beneath my teeth. “Um, at what point between”—I point to the door and back to myself—“did I give that impression?”
A few snickers ripple through the room. Fuckers.
I stand, slow, deliberate. The book presses against my thigh as I make my way to the front of the class.
“What’s the spell?” I ask, voice rough. As if I know shit about spells.
“Something simple.” Professor Astra flicks her fingers. The chalk scribbles out a sigil consisting of three jagged lines that intersect like a broken star. “Light a candle.”
I stare at it. Then at her.
She doesn’t blink, and I swear I see a hue of purple swim through her blue eyes. “Magic isn’t just about power, Haide. It’s aboutprecision.”
My eyes snap toward hers, narrowing slightly.
Precision?
Excitement, or something close to it, unfurls low in my stomach. A hum of promise I’ve never felt.Precision,I understand, and the idea that magic might answer to that makes the air taste suddenly stupidly sweet.
Because Iknowprecision.
Instinctively,intimately.
I mean, no shit, right? It wasn’t a choice, but a requirement when you come from where I do. Especially when you’re born there as the witch of the isle informed me I was. I am nothing if not the picture of survival. And survival comes from instinct and instincts are a product of precision. If not the other way around. Either way, I’m made up of both. Back home, there was no better fighter, no better hunter or builder.
Precision.
Professor Astra’s lips twitch and I swear she can see it, but she’s no longer the object of my attention.
I reach out, fingers hovering over the sigil. The air hums, but it’s not for me. It’s laughing.
Fine. Let’s see what happens when Iimprovise.
Chalk dust powders my fingertips. I exhale through my nose, slow, before pressing my palm flat against the sigil.
The class holds its breath. I hope they fucking choke on it.
I don’t whisper the incantation. Igrowlit, like a curse. A promise. The sigiltwistsunder my hand, the lines moving off the board. My palms begin to warm, and heat spreads through my arm. It’s warm and…right, somehow. Like the fire isn’t rising in me but wakingforme.
A low thrum rolls beneath my skin. It’s primal and hungry, as if something buried in my bones has been waiting for this exact spark. The heat curls up my wrist, as comforting as a wood flame fire on the beaches of my home. It tingles like recognition, like my body is remembering something my mind has never even learned.
Is this what magic feels like?
I focus harder.
